Meet Riasat Rana – A Pakistani Who Left His Life Hanging To Help The Suffering Rohingya Muslims

Disclaimer*: The articles shared under 'Your Voice' section are sent to us by contributors and we neither confirm nor deny the authenticity of any facts stated below. Parhlo News will not be liable for any false, inaccurate, inappropriate or incomplete information presented on the website. Read our disclaimer.

This post is also available in: العربية (Arabic) اردو (Urdu)

This article is about a person’s heart-breaking, yet an eye-opening journey that I am sure most of us thought to make it happen at some point of life but never got the time to actually process our thoughts on it.

Has anyone ever wondered what our goals are when we are fresh graduates? To get a good job? High pay salary? Car? Apartment? Sounds familiar, right? Obviously, these are the very basics which everyone aims for in our daily lives. But did anyone ever think about shedding a little glimpse of empathy or care on the drowning humanity of this present era?

No. Especially when we have so many responsibilities on our head, nobody actually cares about the food war, land war or massacred killings happening worldwide and even if we do care, we don’t seem to do anything about it. Well, that’s not just me. That’s the justification everyone’s mind gives when we talk about such disputes.

So, in these dark times, there are people who despite having so many barriers, so many responsibilities; still try to spread a glimmer of hope, try to get down only to lend a hand to a drowning person. One of them is Riasat Rana, a guy who freshly graduated from UAlbany, United States, works 9 to 5 and is in search of a more career-oriented job. So, what makes this guy stand out from the crowd was a thought of helping humanity in a far-reaching way possible.

Unlike others, when the news of Rohingya Muslims being brutally massacred crossed his eyes, he decided to help them. That doesn’t sound so relatable, because in today’s robot-like lives, mostly our preferences are way more important than helping some unknown people who were brutally massacred in some part of the world. But Riasat decided to take one step further.

He wanted to help those innocent people in any way possible. He decided to travel to Bangladesh himself, all alone and help those people. He somehow contacted Waqar Zaka, a famous TV celebrity, who has been helping some families in Burma too, with his guidance he planned his journey. He started raising funds by making an account on go fund me and asked for charity from his friends and relatives.

Once the charity was raised, he risked his job by taking leave from his office and booked a flight to Bangladesh as Rohingya Muslims mostly migrated to the Bangladesh border. So once he reached Bangladesh, he ordered food trucks and went straight to the border where there were migrated people. Witnessing such chaos requires a huge amount of courage. It was very difficult to help so many people with such scarce resources available.

However, going there by one’s own self and witnessing refugee crisis first hand is not as easy as it sounds. The guy had to take sleeping pills to sleep after watching so much havoc. The donation was given to the refugees in order to help them for food and shelter. People living there were in very miserable conditions, having no roof and 20 people living in one camp with a huge loss of their beloved family members is something that no amount of money can be enough to replace it.

He recently had an interview on WNYT news channel 13 where he shared his personal journey to aid the Rohingya Refugee Crisis. His journey can be read in his own words:

“Watching humans living in a condition bitter than animals is something very disturbing. As the car crosses the border, the long line of camps continued with it. One could see the exact textbook example of ethnic cleansing by witnessing the miserable conditions of people living there. The smoke emerging from the burning villages could be still seen as it darkened the clear blue sky.

There were long lines of people waiting to get their food packs from the truck. The hardest decision was how to give such scarce resources to those unlimited needy innocent refugees. Providing food to one family meant not providing food to some other family. It was the hardest trade off anyone could ever face. It was raining as we started distributing food from the food trucks after that I went to meet some refugees living in the camps.”

Water was dripping off from the ceiling as I entered one camp. It was a small place hardly for two people to adjust yet 10 to 15 family members were having their shelter under those shabby camps. I talked to some people and came to know how hard it was to get away from that battle zone. It pierced my heart knowing that they had to leave their sons, daughters brutally murdered dead bodies in the open village and to run away from there. Watching so many eyes pleading for help was very painful.

However, I managed to help the families as much as I could. But coming back to home was not an easy journey with so much heavy heart and witnessing humans in so much pain. Although I’m planning to go there again as winter is coming and people will be needing more help.

Usually, a fresh graduate in search for a good job does not bother about saving a life or help in a social cause because the most precious thing for him/her at the time is to get a job or fulfill their tons of responsibilities. So, if a person chooses to stand up for other people’s sufferings and tries to help on such a broader level, it should definitely be encouraged.

In the current era where our family bonds are so weak and nobody has time to care about other people’s miseries, making a step forward like this is really commendable! I believe that if a person without any personal benefit thinks about removing a single stone from other’s way should be considered an inspiration and a role model from whom we can learn from.